Clinton opens up campaign events to all
Iowa voters will no longer need a golden ticket to get into a Hillary Clinton campaign event.
The Democratic front-runner began her 2016 presidential campaign with a series of small, tightly controlled meetings in Iowa and other early-voting states. Now, she's adding public rallies – including one in Des Moines Sunday — that anybody can attend.
Critics have accused Clinton of trying to stage intimacy in the small-group settings, at which she's met with a dozen or so invited voters as scores of reporters and photographers have looked on. It's an unusual approach. Most candidates strive to attract as many voters as they can to campaign events. They purposely rent rooms that are a bit too small, so reporters will describe crowds as "standing-room only."
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Dianne Bystrom, an Iowa State University political science professor, said the irony is that eight years ago, critics bashed Clinton for only holding large rallies. "It's very tricky for her, because she's got such a national profile," said Bystrom, who is director of ISU's Catt Center for Women and Politics.
Public rallies let a candidate reach more voters, including the crucial ones who haven't decided on a candidate. But big events also tend to focus on a pre-written stump speech, possibly followed by a few questions from the audience, Bystrom said. The setup can dilute the personal atmosphere that is supposed to make Iowa campaigns special, she said. "When you're speaking to a crowd of 500 people, you just don't have the same interaction as you do in a room of 30 people."
It can be simpler for a candidate to start out as a relative unknown, then build momentum and attract increasing crowds, the professor said. That's what Barack Obama did as he overtook Clinton here in the months leading up to the 2008 Democratic caucuses, and what Rick Santorum did in winning the 2012 Republican caucuses. Clinton, who is the Democrats' dominant front-runner, is starting out in the light and heat of an intense spotlight. Bystrom said she can't remember any other candidate facing scrutiny this sharp this early in an election season.
Of course, a back-of-the-pack candidate would kill for some of that attention. "Candidates want media coverage — even Hillary Clinton wants coverage, even if it frustrates her sometimes," Bystrom said.
Clinton's addition of public rallies doesn't signal the end of her small events. In fact, she's bracketed Sunday's midday State Fairgrounds rally with invitation-only "house parties" in Sioux City Saturday evening and Burlington Sunday afternoon.
Matt Paul, who is managing Clinton's Iowa campaign, said she plans to hold plenty of both kinds of events. The small meetings let a selection of Iowans speak at length to the candidate, he said. "What we've been trying to do is to give Hillary as much time as possible to listen to Iowans, to hear their stories, their concerns and most importantly, their solutions for some of the nation's largest challenges," Paul said.
He said, for example, that Iowans have drawn the candidate's attention to the scourge of drug abuse, including addiction to narcotics. They also have talked to her about the lack of mental health services, especially in rural areas. Those stories led Clinton to ask her policy experts to draw up proposals on the issues, he said.
Paul noted the campaign formally began just two months ago. He and others have been concentrating on opening campaign offices and adding staff and volunteers, he said. The campaign now has nine offices and 27 employees in the state. The staff already has held nearly 2,500 one-on-one meetings with Iowa voters, he said.
Paul said he knows there are Iowans who would have wanted to attend Clinton's earlier events, but weren't invited. They'll get a chance to see her in the next seven-and-a-half months, he said. "She's going to be here, and we're going to be focused on getting her in front of as many Iowa Democrats as we can."
Many of those Iowa Democrats backed other candidates in the 2008 caucuses, in which Clinton finished third behind Obama and John Edwards. She's already won over some prominent Iowans, including former party Chairwoman Sue Dvorsky of Coralville, who supported others last time.
Dvorsky spoke on Clinton's behalf last weekend at a house party in West Branch. She said she's thrilled Clinton is taking another shot after narrowly losing the nomination to Obama in 2008. The influx of Clinton organizers shows the campaign isn't taking Iowa for granted, despite the candidate's large lead in the polls, she said. Dvorsky expressed optimism that Clinton's efforts here will help other Democratic candidates. The party could use the support in the wake of the 2014 elections, in which Iowa Democrats lost ground in the Statehouse and in Congress. "It is incredibly important to me that we stop the slide and start rebuilding," Dvorsky said.
The candidate's mix of small and large events is a smart approach for someone with such a high profile, Dvorsky said. "There's never been a candidate like she is. There's never been a two-time first lady, and U.S. senator and former secretary of state," she said. "She's doesn't need to do a thousand-person rally to get a thousand people to know her name." On the other hand, Dvorsky said, Clinton can't just drop by a coffee shop and informally chat up whoever's there, because she's always followed by a mob of reporters and photographers.
Clinton isn't the first prominent candidate to face such tensions. Other national front-runners from both parties have struggled to engage with Iowa voters in a natural-feeling way.
"Iowans want to meet these men and women, they want to touch them and be touched by them. They want to ask their own questions," said David Oman, a veteran Republican political operative from Des Moines. That's hard to achieve when a candidate is surrounded by dozens of reporters and photographers, he said.
Four years ago, Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney had similar challenges when he campaigned as the national frontrunner before the Iowa caucuses and then again as the Republicans' nominee in the general election. Oman was co-chairman of Romney's Iowa campaign. He saw firsthand how the throngs of voters and media complicated efforts to offer rally participants a chance for direct, meaningful contact with the candidate.
"It's a very challenging environment for everyone involved, and there are security concerns that people should keep in mind," Oman said.
Oman cheerfully declined to offer hypothetical advice to Clinton, noting that he's already agreed to advise Jeb Bush, a Republican who faces his own crowds. But Oman couldn't resist a dig at the Democratic frontrunner. He said Bush routinely fields questions from reporters and unscreened members of the public. He noted that Clinton has been criticized for failing to do much of that. "The media will never be satisfied with eavesdropping on canned Q&A sessions — nor should they," he said.
Paul, Clinton's Iowa campaign manager, said voters and reporters will get plenty of chances to ask her questions before the Feb. 1 caucuses.
Clinton rally
Hillary Clinton's first public rally of the 2016 campaign will be at the Iowa State Fairgrounds Sunday. Doors open at 10:30 a.m., with Clinton expected to speak about noon.